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16 package holidays with style

The package holiday used to mean a game of sardines on the beach of a Spanish costa. It still does, unless you spend hours scouring the brochures for the odd stunning, cheap destination that, this year, is in there too. Chris Haslam saves you the bother

Remember the tour operator Alistair McLean? Of course you do: he is the snobby boss of Activities Abroad, who infamously declared his holidays to be "chav-free zones", saying that on his trips, one was more likely to encounter customers called Sarah, James and Lucy than those named Britney, Bianca and Dazza.

McLean claims his socially divisive approach has brought him no end of middle-class business, but it got us thinking. Is there really a class divide between the brochures, or is that spin?

Are the offerings from mass-market operators such as Thomson, First Choice and Cosmos nothing more than Argos catalogues full of all-inclusive karaoke joints, or are there diamonds buried between the high-rises?

We've spent the past week sorting the wheat from the chav - sorry, chaff - and we've found some gorgeous spots, at cracking prices, where Charlottes are as welcome as Chardonnays. Perhaps it's time to drop the snobbery